At least an animal
Oct. 25th, 2009 01:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lhexaPart of a conversation with Cube about identity and insanity.
...I don't have a character, much less one for each species. So I describe the identification as a set of affiliations, implying some degree of loyalty to humanity's present understanding of the two species. That understanding includes the literature tied to the animals (though tied very loosely, in the case of the fisher).
So less a pure furry and more one interested in furry (historical and present) as a lens for understanding humanity?
Neither. Not the former because if a pure furry exists, I don't know what it is. Not the latter, because understanding humanity is a side concern. I'm a furry in order to ensure that I'm at least an animal. I mean to imply that the development of humanity has made the majority of its members something less. Purposes, appearances, activities, perspectives are all less than animal (they go into, they compose what is animal), but human beings are reduced to being, in a vital sense -- that is, reduced to embodying or living -- such things as purposes, appearances, activities, perspectives...
At present humanity is something less than animal. Once I can figure out, to my satisfaction (or rather completion) how I am an animal, maybe then I can try to envision humanity as a higher form of life.
But to get back to the previous point, my understanding of what is fox-like or fisher-like will be human understandings thereof, my capacity for understanding them being a human one. Even if, as I argue (and once argued for draconity), what is fox-like and what is fisher-like cannot be reduced to a subset of what is human.
...Disconnected from a purposeful life by the structures humankind has built for itself. Tricky to undo...
A later part of the conversation.
...I think that more insight in this problem [of boundless greed] can be found in the idea of the fox. There's the insight that hit me with so much force when I first read the Ysengrimus. Reynard isn't any less greedy than Ysengrimus, but his is, in short, a different (and better) form that greed can take. He makes use of cleverness rather than strength, and his ability is what can redirect the raw drive of an Ysengrimus. Power, or the need for power, can't be repressed (that only replaces power with power), nor can it be reasoned with, but it can be outwitted.
All of these magical or divine creatures humanity has described provide ways of coming to terms with what is limitless in a person, whether it be power, suffering, love, patience, or any of the other things that have been expressed at various points in history... any one of which has the capacity to completely reshape human society. The vulpine answer is, in short, that divinity is cleverness. The application of this idea, in my case, is that whatever anger, pettiness, insecurity, delusion, vanity, hopelessness, and resignation might exist in me (and there's much at times), they can all be outwitted. (Again, for emphasis... not controlled, and not reasoned with, but outwitted.)
The downside to this approach is that, like Reynard, I have no final victories over my failings... hunger will never be more than a day away, and Ysengrimus or his kin (that is, what they represent) will always reappear to test my cleverness again. The fox is not the form of one who most values rest, comfort, or endings. But it works.
I hope there's something in there you can use.
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Purpose
Date: 2009-10-27 02:16 am (UTC)Us, and though I'm not sure, I think the immateriality of purpose results from elevating purpose above other concepts. Identity, experience, and role are other concepts which could organize a life and its activities equally effectively -- just imagine the implications of the questions "Who am I?", "What should I experience?" or "What is my role?" -- but instead those concepts are subordinated to that of purpose. At present a human being has the blessing to ask what his purpose is, but he is not blessed to ask whether or not purpose itself should matter to him. The question "What is the meaning of life?" is a common preoccupation, but the question "Why should meaning be asked of life?" goes unexplored.
You already know that the creation of hierarchy is a pernicious human weakness, and the same tendency appears here. Rather than respecting the metaphysics of the concepts, and deciding that no direct comparison of importance can be made between ontologically unlike things, concepts are grouped into hierarchies of importance, with what is lower in the hierarchy forcibly put in terms of what is at the top of the hierarchy. So questions of, say, experience (and the ethics thereof) are subordinated to questions of purpose, and "What should I experience?" is taken to mean "What purposes should my experiences serve?"
These words come back to how human beings become less than animal, by emphasizing only one aspect of the many that go into being animal. An animal has no capacity to set up such a hierarchy, and so it cannot subordinate everything to purpose. The animal has its purpose or purposes, but it cannot, in the terms I used in the original conversation, be reduced to a purpose. As for us human beings (heh, in the varying senses in which we are human), I know that we can, with effort, create an alternative hierarchy of concepts, but I wonder whether any of us can train himself to have no hierarchy among ontologically distinct concepts.
Animals (and perhaps some of my creatures) simply have their purpose defined for them.
I'm not sure about this. They may lack the aforementioned blessing, but it doesn't follow that the purpose is defined for them, whether by some outside agency, fact or condition, or by something internal called instinct... there is some variation (for instance, a vixen may establish her own den and family, or remain to help raise her mother's new kits), and there is the possibility of purposelessness (say, that of a cage-bred animal released into the wild). There are also the familiar pitfalls of anthropomorphization.
I think the reason that questions of purpose become either trivial or problematic when applied to animals is because our hierarchy of concepts (with purpose on top) does not translate to their behavior. For instance, if you switch to the concept of role, rather than purpose, suddenly the behavior of animals becomes considerably more comprehensible. (Parenthetically: It is easy to reduce role to purpose, but it's also easy to reduce purpose to role, particularly for animals. You can imagine an alternative conceptual hierarchy in which purpose is below role in importance, and you can make a case that such a hierarchy once prevailed over women, slaves and children.)
Unfortunately, there's a subtle problem when it comes to animals: refusing to apply a human concept to animals may be just as much an act of anthropomorphization as applying it would be, when the concept itself is illustrative, but its implications for human beings render it inapplicable. If our concept of purpose were less important to us, and thus less problematic, it would be easier to apply.
While I'm here, what do you mean by a "false purpose"?
Finally, to return to the earliest question: what can give purpose its needed weight? I do not know, but I think the question has an empirical answer.
Re: Purpose
Date: 2009-11-07 07:27 pm (UTC)Us, and though I'm not sure, I think the immateriality of purpose results from elevating purpose above other concepts. Identity, experience, and role are other concepts which could organize a life and its activities equally effectively -- just imagine the implications of the questions "Who am I?", "What should I experience?" or "What is my role?" -- but instead those concepts are subordinated to that of purpose. At present a human being has the blessing to ask what his purpose is, but he is not blessed to ask whether or not purpose itself should matter to him. The question "What is the meaning of life?" is a common preoccupation, but the question "Why should meaning be asked of life?" goes unexplored.
Purpose might be put higher in the hierarchy because we want to perform actions that make a meaningful difference, and purpose provides such meaning in directing what actions we should take. If we are transient and the world is not (or at least greatly outlasts us), then what the question "what is my purpose" answers affects something which will stay around for much longer than the question of "who am I" or "what should I experience" does; and because of that transient nature of ourselves, there is a sense of urgency: "I have to know what I should be doing so that what I am actually doing isn't wasted".
I don't know if that is really the right explanation, I'm just going by what seems to be right; in such matters as these there is no verification. For instance, it might be that it is actually we who persist and the universe that is transient, in which case purpose is not as paramount - true, action would affect others, but we would also change ourselves by asking the other questions. Or; our placement of purpose so highly might be a yearning, where, in a world where (almost) everything is possible, yet nothing is clear (or the "purposes" seem shallow - working for food has no greater order to it), one wants a purpose that both has force and is without a doubt, right.
You already know that the creation of hierarchy is a pernicious human weakness, and the same tendency appears here. Rather than respecting the metaphysics of the concepts, and deciding that no direct comparison of importance can be made between ontologically unlike things, concepts are grouped into hierarchies of importance, with what is lower in the hierarchy forcibly put in terms of what is at the top of the hierarchy. So questions of, say, experience (and the ethics thereof) are subordinated to questions of purpose, and "What should I experience?" is taken to mean "What purposes should my experiences serve?"
That might be part of the reason, though it doesn't seem, at the face of it, that animals would be spared. If they can think about the metaphysics of the concepts, they can also rearrange things in the wrong way; and if they can't, then they are forced to use the arrangement provided in some manner.
In the former case, the argument could be applied to them as well; however, we might say that humans (or, heh, as you say, to the extent that we're human), have a particular weakness to hierarchy that we shouldn't expect animals to share unless proven otherwise. If so, even if animals are biased in some way, they can show us a point of view where purpose isn't the be-all, since their bias would be different.
In the latter case, how do we know that the metaphysical priorities of the animal is arranged correctly? They may have a hierarchy of their own, or have other values; the difference is that they can't do anything about them. If we were to lose our capacity to choose purpose, or to weigh purpose against other concepts, we would still have the hierarchy, but now it would be unchangeable.
Re: Purpose
Date: 2009-12-21 06:27 am (UTC)The concept of purpose certainly seems powerful enough to make it viable as one atop the hierarchy, but again the questions could arise: Why is it meaning that should be asked of actions? Why is what lasts longer more important than what doesn't? How is it that transience defeats meaning? I am not sure that these have simple answers. And it doesn't look like anything within such a hierarchy will tell you whether the same questions arise within a different hierarchy, or within a non-hierarchical set of concepts. That is, if you were using a hierarchy that placed identity (say) at the top, would the same paradox of purpose arise?
That might be part of the reason, though it doesn't seem, at the face of it, that animals would be spared. If they can think about the metaphysics of the concepts, they can also rearrange things in the wrong way; and if they can't, then they are forced to use the arrangement provided in some manner.
I assume that they can't, but that does not mean that they are forced to use some arrangement; rather, I would say that animals are able to not have a metaphysics. This relates to one of the points of my original post, which is that a hierarchy of concepts can reduce a human being to something less than animal. Human beings, by their social nature, are forced to use some arrangement of concepts, and if they have the misfortune to have the wrong arrangement -- say, one which renders thought incoherent, saps motivation, creates indelible paradoxes, induces despair, or constrains the imagination -- then they are not, in general, free to seek another arrangement. A creature more free than a human being would be able to, like an animal, do without a metaphysics, as a first step in experimenting with a new metaphysics... rather than being reduced by that metaphysics into some subset of what is animal.
In the latter case, how do we know that the metaphysical priorities of the animal is arranged correctly?
As far as I know, they have no such priorities, which is what makes them interesting from the standpoint of weighing different arrangements of concepts. To wholly experiment with metaphysics, to wholly adopt a new hierarchy and/or set of concepts, I think one would first have to pass through such an animal state.
Re: Purpose
Date: 2009-11-07 07:29 pm (UTC)I'm not sure about this. They may lack the aforementioned blessing, but it doesn't follow that the purpose is defined for them, whether by some outside agency, fact or condition, or by something internal called instinct... there is some variation (for instance, a vixen may establish her own den and family, or remain to help raise her mother's new kits), and there is the possibility of purposelessness (say, that of a cage-bred animal released into the wild). There are also the familiar pitfalls of anthropomorphization.
That's a good point. I suppose it would be more accurate to say that the relative value of purpose, as well as the different kinds thereof, has been given to them, but that still partly falls to what you're saying, as well. They can reason (in as far as they reason) about actions (the first level, so to speak), but not about concepts such as reason themselves (the second). I might ask about what the nature of that purpose is (and how "fundamental" it has to be), but that would diverge from the subject onto ontology.
I think the reason that questions of purpose become either trivial or problematic when applied to animals is because our hierarchy of concepts (with purpose on top) does not translate to their behavior. For instance, if you switch to the concept of role, rather than purpose, suddenly the behavior of animals becomes considerably more comprehensible. (Parenthetically: It is easy to reduce role to purpose, but it's also easy to reduce purpose to role, particularly for animals. You can imagine an alternative conceptual hierarchy in which purpose is below role in importance, and you can make a case that such a hierarchy once prevailed over women, slaves and children.)
Rather than that role can be reduced to purpose or vice versa, it seems that they're both shades of the same thing: they're links of meaningful direction to either an action (purpose) or to a way of being (a role). By direction, I mean that they say "this is better than that", and by meaningful, that the reason or impact is not spurious (as such, carries "meaning"). Is that, too, a hierarchy? It sounds like it is, but the root component is common to both.
While I'm here, what do you mean by a "false purpose"?
Say you hold a very high standard of purpose: it has to be given to you by the universe, otherwise it could just as easily be invented. Then a false purpose is something which is invented (i.e. does not satisfy your stringent requirement, whatever that requirement is), yet appears to pass. Or more simply put: say there's a meaning to life - and you convince yourself of something else. That other is a false purpose.
The definition would also hold if "purpose" itself requires a certain standard in order to make sense. I don't know if it does, but the standard doesn't have to be subjective, it could also be objective. Going in that direction, we'd probably return to ever greater standards not being "good enough", and eventually to the entropic problem we've talked about earlier (in this version, in the semblance of "no purpose can be true because all my actions are sooner or later worn down by entropy in the form of time").
Finally, to return to the earliest question: what can give purpose its needed weight? I do not know, but I think the question has an empirical answer.
How could we find out, then? If it has an empirical answer, it should be possible.
If my answers feel growly or curt, that's not the intention... but since I lost my previous reply, I had to write quickly and so might have summarized too much, cut a bit too close to the bone. In any case, I did not intend to be rude towards you.
Re: Purpose
Date: 2009-12-21 06:42 am (UTC)Well, that diversion might be worthwhile. One of the problems I'm wondering about in this conversation is, how do you judge the worth of one hierarchy of concepts from within a different hierarchy? I guess that's an ontological matter as much as anything.
Rather than that role can be reduced to purpose or vice versa, it seems that they're both shades of the same thing: they're links of meaningful direction to either an action (purpose) or to a way of being (a role). By direction, I mean that they say "this is better than that", and by meaningful, that the reason or impact is not spurious (as such, carries "meaning"). Is that, too, a hierarchy?
I think so, yeah -- but it's a different hierarchy, with meaning more important than purpose or role.
While I'm here, what do you mean by a "false purpose"?
Say you hold a very high standard of purpose: it has to be given to you by the universe, otherwise it could just as easily be invented.
Er, I see how a false purpose exists in that sense, but was that the sense you meant when you said you think that false purposes exist? If you did mean it in that sense, the point seems trivial. Though if it's been too long between replies, of course, that question might have become unanswerable -- sorry about that.
Finally, to return to the earliest question: what can give purpose its needed weight? I do not know, but I think the question has an empirical answer.
How could we find out, then? If it has an empirical answer, it should be possible.
Find the people whose purposes have the requisite weight (whose purposes provide an effective organizing principle for their actions and life), then ask them about (and otherwise investigate) those purposes. I call this matter empirical because we already know that some purposes, for some people, have that weight, even though the theoretical question of how a purpose acquires weight seems intractable. (And yeah, it's just as intractable to me as it is to you.)
In any case, I did not intend to be rude towards you.
It's fine, you didn't come across that way.